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10 Megaregions Reconsidered: Urban Futures and the Future of the Urban

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10 Megaregions Reconsidered: Urban Futures and the Future of the Urban View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository 1 10 Megaregions reconsidered: urban futures and the future of the urban John Harrison and Michael Hoyler 10.1 An introduction to (more than just) a debate on megaregions We live in a world of competing urban, regional and other spatial imaginaries. This book’s chief concern has been with one such spatial imaginary – the megaregion. More particularly, its theme has been the assertion that the megaregion constitutes globalization’s new urban form. Yet, what is clear is that the intellectual and practical literatures underpinning the megaregion thesis are not internally coherent and this is the cause of considerable confusion over the precise role of megaregions in globalization. This book has offered one solution through its focus on the who, how and why of megaregions much more than the what and where of megaregions. In short, moving the debate forward from questions of definition, identification and delimitation to questions of agency (who or what is constructing megaregions), process (how are megaregions being constructed), and specific interests (why are megaregions being constructed) is the contribution of this book. The individual chapters have interrogated many of the claims and counter-claims made about megaregions through examples as diverse as California, the US Great Lakes, Texas and the Gulf Coast, Greater Paris, Northern England, Northern Europe, and China’s Pearl River Delta. But, as with any such volume, our approach has offered up as many new questions as it has provided answers. In this concluding chapter, we 2 identify some of these questions as part of an ongoing reconsideration of megaregions and reformulation of a programme of research for those of us interested in megaregions and global urban studies more broadly. One of the main unresolved questions to arise out of this book is the status and position of the ‘megaregion’ within global urban studies. This extends much further than the immediate focus of this book, so one of our aims in this final chapter is to connect the contribution(s) of this collection to contemporary debates centred on urban futures and the future of the urban. The book has presented multiple pathways into the megaregion debate and we have identified four to develop further in this chapter, which are: (1) competing or complementary spatial imaginaries; (2) megaregional glocalization; (3) utopian/dystopian urban dreams; and (4) urban history, periodization and temporality. To foreground this, we begin with three examples which caught our eye in the short period we were writing this chapter. They serve as an important reminder both of the continuing influence of megaregions within popular public discourses and the need for the type of more critical analysis that this book promotes. 10.1.1 The Cali Baja ‘Megaregion’ In October 2013, David Mayagoitia, Chairman of the Tijuana Economic Development Corporation extolled the virtues of a megaregion spanning the US-Mexican border when officially launching the Cali Baja Binational Megaregion Initiative (http://www.calibaja.net/cbdb/p/): 3 What we’re trying to do is promote investment … We want to create a binational economic development entity that actually promotes the whole region as a single group. The [US-Mexican] border only represents a line that we have to cross on a daily basis. What we would like to do is expand our region to include Los Angeles, because why not? Why not create a picture of what we want to be, and strive for that picture. Why not be Hong Kong and Shenzhen? (quoted in Connor, 2013) Looking beyond the goal of investment and the fact that this is clearly indicative of how the geoeconomic logic for promoting the competitiveness of megaregions is putting megaregionalism centre stage of political action, what marks this example out among the many others we could have chosen is that Cali Baja is a cross-border region. Located on the US-Mexico border, Cali Baja is geographically proximate to, but politically detached from, the US megaregions. This is important for two reasons. On the one hand, Tijuana, Mexico is only one mile from the US border so, for Mayagoitia, playing down the significance of the border while playing up the potential for a binational economic development entity favours Cali Baja’s inclusion alongside Cascadia as a cross-border megaregion within the discursive framing of US megaregions. 1 On the other hand, Tijuana is located just 25 miles from San Diego and 140 miles from Los Angeles: expanding to include Los Angeles not only brings the outside in, to make the case stronger for a Cali Baja megaregion, it takes the inside out, because Cali Baja would by the same token become part of an already existing South California megaregion (Harrison and Hoyler, 2015, Figure 1.1). 4 Quite clearly, there are strong motivating factors for Mayagoitia, Tijuana and Cali Baja to pursue megaregionalism as both an economic and political strategy. But while they can seek to influence the discursive framing of megaregions what they cannot do is change it. They are on the fringes economically, while politically they are excluded. On the face of it they are disempowered by the discourse of US megaregions. Yet, in and through the creation of a megaregional space they are entering the possibility of engaging and exerting influence over other centres of social power. Facing up to this challenge, Mayagoitia goes on to add: There’s really no rules, there’s really no set manual to set up a mega-region. Things sort of evolve and happen, and you respond to those things. As you go through this process, you begin to realize that collaboration makes you stronger … It makes people listen to what you have to say. (quoted in Connor, 2013) If the earlier statement focused on the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of the Cali Baja megaregion, the remainder of this section has focused on the ‘who’, the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ in relation to megaregions. The opening to this second statement is pertinent because although megaregions have fast become an officially institutionalized task for policy elites the world over, megaregions are not universally accepted as ‘official’ state/governmental policy. The result is less prescription than might otherwise be the case, meaning the question of who constructs megaregions and why becomes even more important. In this way the final sentence becomes the most significant. It shines a light on what is the ultimate goal of megaregionalism as a political project – exerting influence in and through megaregions. The open question in this example and many 5 others too are: who are the ‘people’, what is (and whose is) the message, and perhaps most critical of all, if successful who, what and where is likely to gain/lose the most as a result? 10.1.2 The Hampton Roads-Richmond ‘Megaregion’ In December 2013 the unfolding process of megaregionalism saw actors located in another space which currently finds itself ‘off’ the politically-constructed map of megaregions ponder its position within national and international circuits of globalized capital accumulation. Located in the US State of Virginia, Hampton Roads and Richmond are strategically positioned between two megaregions. 100 miles to the north of Richmond is Washington, DC and the southern tip of the Northeast Megaregion (Gottmann’s (1961) ‘megalopolis’). To the south is Raleigh, the northernmost city in the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion identified by the Regional Plan Association (RPA) (2006), located 180 miles from Hampton Roads. As a result, Hampton Roads and Richmond find themselves located on the fringes of US megaregionalism as it is politically constructed. This has not gone unnoticed, particularly among local business leaders. More interesting is the response: Businesses can certainly do this on their own. We don’t need the formality of a megaregion, but it’s a perception. We certainly need to look united to be competitive to our brethren to the north and south who have already created those megaregions that are competing better than we are now. (Tom Frantz, Hampton Roads Business Roundtable, quoted in Bozick, 2013) 6 Unlike Cali Baja, where the modus operandi is to create a formal megaregion, the approach favoured by business leaders in Hampton Roads implies seeking the benefits of operating like a megaregion in an economic sense (and signified to the wider world through a merger of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)) but without the formality of being a megaregion in the political sense. This example demonstrates that the question is not always where, why and how actors choose to engage in the construction of megaregions but why some choose to engage more than others. In the case of Hampton Roads and Richmond do they choose not to engage in attempts to politically construct a megaregion because they recognize they will not be permitted into the exclusive club of 11 megaregions which the Regional Plan Association (2006) have placed on a pedestal as America’s new urban hierarchy? Is it that business sees the whole megaregion idea as being somehow abstract and of no immediate consequence other than in marketing terms? Or is it that they can see the potential importance in terms of attracting business and infrastructure investment, thus engaging with the megaregion concept but only on their own terms? These are the important but often unanswered questions which we argue the more critical perspective promoted by this book can and need to avail answers to if we are to move forward with megaregions as a key component of global urban studies. Cali Baja and Hampton Roads-Richmond appear to adopt very different strategies yet they both respond to the same feeling of being disempowered by megaregionalism, and globalized urbanization more broadly.
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